I setup a new installation of unraid on a Dell PE 2950 with two 1Gb SATA disks.  Unraid boots fine but does not see the disks so it's basically useless.  I tried disabling the PERC controller in the BIOS, I tried re-enabling it, creating RAID0 virtual disks and creating ext2 partitions on the disks, but no change in unraid's empty device list.

 

Any suggestions appreciated.  I bought this used server specifically to run unraid, if it doesn't work I will have to return it.

 

Unraid 4.7

 

Thanks for your attention; zipped syslog attached.

urSyslog.zip

I setup a new installation of unraid on a Dell PE 2950 with two 1Gb SATA disks.  Unraid boots fine but does not see the disks so it's basically useless.  I tried disabling the PERC controller in the BIOS, I tried re-enabling it, creating RAID0 virtual disks and creating ext2 partitions on the disks, but no change in unraid's empty device list.

 

Any suggestions appreciated.  I bought this used server specifically to run unraid, if it doesn't work I will have to return it.

 

Unraid 4.7

 

Thanks for your attention; zipped syslog attached.

Your syslog seems to indicate that unRAID does see the disks. What makes you think that it doesn't? Post a screenshot of what you see that makes you think unRAID does not see the disks.

 

Also, you must not use any form of hardware RAID with unRAID, and ext2 partitions are not appropriate either. unRAID will partition your disks to reiserfs.

 

Have you read the WIKI Configuration Tutorial?

Thanks for pointing me to the configuration wiki article.  Per the instructions I ran preclear_disk -l to list the disks and the only thing it lists is the builtin usb dell virtual floppy.  Not the sata disks.

 

The main http screen has no entries under 'disk status', and the devices screen dropdowns for parity disk, disk1 and disk2 all have no entries except 'unassigned' to choose from.

 

Hence my statement that no disks are seen by unraid.  So I'm kind of dead in the water unless I'm missing something.

From the looks of it your disk controller, PERC, is not recognized by the kernel and therefore no drives are detected. The only drive listed is your CD-DVD ROM. It seems to me there has been another post recently about how to get a PERC to work with unRAID......

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=20602.0

This might be of help to you. But I think you'll need to identify the exact model of disk controller you have and you might have to flash the PERC.

BUT, you should also try the latest release, V5.0rc16, it's been very stable and the kernel might detect your controller.

 

There also seems to be an issue with the 2950's NICs:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=27931.0

Hopefully you can work out these issues and the it running.

OK thanks [i think] doorunrun.  The controller is a Dell PERC 6/i.  I will try 5.0 RC unraid tonight after work, but based on reading the thread you linked I suspect I'll need to flash the controller to IT mode.  Which I'm not sure will work since the software discussed is for different LSI firmware [1068 vs 1078].  And I'm pretty sure Dell doesn't provide a tool for this, but I'll check.

 

No problem with the NICs, network access seems fine.  Unfortunately there's no storage to access!

Here's a link of a successful PERC 6/i installation; there's not too much information shared, but it seems to indicate flashing wasn't necessary with a more recent version of unRAID.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=19624.0

 

There's a long thread on LSI Controller FW, the PERC 6/i is mentioned.

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=12767.135

 

It sure seems to be a gray area as to whether or not it really, really works. I don't have any controller-flashing experience with unRAID, the fear is you'll wind up with a bricked card. I hope you can find firmware that will allow flash back.

--Cheers!

So when I try to boot from version 5.0-rc16c I get 'no operating system'.  I redownloaded the zip and the md5 matches.  I ran make_bootable.bat as admin.  The release version 4 boots fine but as mentioned above does not see my PERC 6/i controller.  I seem to be unable to create a working UNRAID USB from version 5.0-rc16c on the lime-technology download site.  I tried reformatting the USB and rebuilding with the same result.  Trying to remain calm.

A question about syslinux just came up and it might relate to your current circumstances:

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=28547.msg254068#msg254068

The point being the latest syslinux.exe might not play nice with an older BIOS. You might have to use the syslinux.exe and c32 files from the 4.7 install.

Another approach would be to use a different USB flash drive. You can test the existing USB flash drive you have in another computer (newer) and see if it boots to the unRAID splash screen.

Well if you have a working usb with version 4. Just copy all files some ware safe  off it, than copy the bizroot and othe files over old ones. It should upgrade all to new version.  Search this board for upgrade directions.

 

Sent from my SGH-T889 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

Per Doorunrun's information about syslinux I upgraded the BIOS of this server to the most current version.  No change in behavior.  Per vl1969 I upgraded my working USB stick by copying over the biz* files and the upgrade worked!  Now it boots the most current 5.0 RC version.  Unfortunately unraid still doesn't see my disks.  So next I will have to attempt the controller firmware flash.  Probably not happening today - stay tuned and thanks for all the advice.